


Reflections

by KaeKae



Category: SWatH, Snow White and the Huntsman
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/M, Huntsman 3rd person POV, Present Tense, endgame OTP, meta inserts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-04
Updated: 2012-06-04
Packaged: 2017-11-06 19:18:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/422274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaeKae/pseuds/KaeKae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Huntsman has learned much more than he ever expected in his travels with Snow White.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tenacity

**Author's Note:**

> This is a drabble collection. Very short, to the point. I have a longer fic planned, but I really wanted to flesh out the characters first and get a more solid hold on them and feel them. Despite their length, they've been enjoyable to write and I hope others may enjoy them as well.

The princess is a tenacious young woman.

It’s no forced admission; the Huntsman is glad for it.

It has been a very long time since she has been able to roam free – locked in a tower for at least eight years, she’d informed him. The sure-footedness she’d once had in her earlier years will take time to return to her, much to her gentle annoyance, but she pushes herself back up and moves on after every fall.

She does not think herself above asking for help either. Something he refused to ever do long ago.

He scales a high ridge of rocks with ease and stops to crouch on the edge, watching her. She attempts to follow him, slipping down once, twice, and then making the half-way point the third time, but she slips and this time can’t catch herself, meeting the ground with her rump.

Snow White looks up at him; wet hair plastered to her face, and offers a slightly pained grin.

She eases herself back up to her feet and starts the climb once more. This time she stops at the midpoint, ensuring that her hold is as solid as she can get. Her dark eyes scan the rocks she has yet to scale and he can see that she can’t make it.

She hasn’t the arm length for the reach, nor the strength – he can see it in the way her arms tremble.

He sets his axe down, lowering himself to the ground and reaches out to offer her his hand. That small, gentle smile he’s only seen a few times before appears on her face. He simply nods.

She takes his hand he helps pull her the rest of the way up.

She won’t ever have to ask him for help.


	2. Beauty

The Queen is a beautiful woman.

Fearsome as she is, she is still a woman of unrivaled elegance; her finely carved features are only emphasized by her grace.

But the Huntsman found that her beauty did not sway him in the way it had other men. There is an internal malice that shows through her eyes, mixing with the hate and judgment that cloud them. And when he looked in those eyes he had recoiled. He was forced to kneel rather than willingly becoming her servant, staring defiantly back at her rather than shying away.

Snow White says there is sadness in Ravenna. It is buried deep, but she can sense it. Most would call the princess’s empathy a weakness, but it is her greatest strength.

All she needs to do is look into someone’s eyes and she can see who they truly are. And she understands.

At first the Huntsman avoided her gaze as much as possible, but now he finds a comfort in her eyes that he’d never before thought possible.

Snow White is not beautiful like the queen, but she is beautiful in the way his wife had been. Her beauty is amplified by the driven spirit within her. The princess exudes life, whereas the Queen brings only destruction.

His wife always emphasized the importance of looking beyond the superficial.

Snow White remarks that it is a shame no one taught the Queen such a thing.

He counters that it is a shame she is not yet dead.

She agrees and looks off into the distance, dark eyes soft with thought.

It is a shame that men do not understand as he does, she continues. Perhaps then she would never have done as she’s done.

He is silent.

It is the princess who understands more than anyone and for that, with bright eyes set in a dirt smeared face, she is the fairest of them all.

Snow White smiles and the world is alive once more.


	3. Purity

What does it mean to be pure?

Her question is rhetorical, but the Huntsman finds himself considering it nonetheless.

Before his wife, he simply did as he wanted. With his wife he learned to look into the opinions of others and was guided to wisdom. He fell back out after her death.

The princess forces him to consider and think through all potential sides.

The question stays in his head.

And she adds more angles throughout the day.

Why do so many consider a woman’s purity to be physical and a man’s spiritual?

He opens his mouth as if to argue on instinct and finds he cannot.

He is not pure. His body and spirit had both been stained long ago and his wife took him in regardless. He had never even questioned her about her supposed purity. He hadn’t cared. He loved her and was grateful that she loved him in return. That was all that was important to him.

And yet men worse than him in every aspect demanded a pure woman for a wife while they took from others whatever they wanted by whatever means necessary before tossing them as if they were scraps of leather unfit for use.

The Huntsman finds that perhaps in his youth he’d passed many judgments concerning purity, but now…

The village of women and their daughters, faces scarred – they weren’t considered truly pure: unfit, ruined. And yet they were pure, no matter what the Queen might have thought. They were good people.

To be pure is to be good, he offers quietly, walking by her side through a limb strewn thicket, dead trees stretching around them as far as the eye can see.

She pushes her hair from her face, red mouth pulling into that thoughtful smile he’s come to enjoy the sight of.

Well then. What does it mean to be good?

And he is once more full of thoughts he’d never even once tried to consider.


	4. Bathing

They bathe only once, maybe twice a week at most. If that.

They’re used to being dirty. The Huntsman hasn’t cared about hygiene for the longest time and Snow White hasn’t had many chances throughout the years. Nor much desire to when she knew prying eyes tried to glimpse what she hadn’t given consent to.

With him, she strips down right before him, uncaring if he sees her body. He’d already made his lack of attraction to her clear when they first met and he’d relieved her of those ridiculous skirts.

The princess is slender and pale and dark-haired. There is a softness to her body that many royalty carry – the ones not constantly out in the field doing manual labor. Or locked in a tower, apparently- which would explain how she looks underfed as well. No doubt her figure will change further, filling out properly, with age and proper food.

She is shameless when she studies him, occasionally approaching him with curiosity regarding a scar or a clearly developed muscle that she cannot see on herself.

Snow White is a woman, yet a child. But she possesses wisdom beyond her own age. She is a complex his mind struggles to wrap around.

And when he thinks he has figured her out, she breaks free from whatever mental box he’s set her in. He decides to simply stop trying and accept that Snow White is exactly whoever, whatever she is.

The relief he feels from such a decision bemuses him.

Water splashes his face and he splutters, shaking his head and sending water everywhere. She laughs and splashes him again.

He catches her by her soft, narrow waist and throws her near across the pond.

When she breaks the water’s surface, he finds that the slight flush to her skin suits her.


End file.
